


Christmas Memories: 2029

by wren_kt7oz



Series: Gus/ Dani - Homecoming Future [5]
Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-10-07 14:03:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17367230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wren_kt7oz/pseuds/wren_kt7oz
Summary: Written for the qaf_giftxhchnge 2018 on LJ.The request was for:Fic angst, AU, canon-compliant, hurt/comfort, humor Brian/ Justin- / Gus- Gus is an adult- time could be holiday or family reunion or just visiting B/J- writer's choice. Gus reminiscing about growing up with B/J- Funny stories, harrowing tales, first times, tales about trips they made- anything the writer chooses. Would love at least 2-3 stories ( tales) that Gus shares. B/J could disagree with his memories and they could tell their version- if writer chooses. ( not necessary- just choice of writer)This is the result. It's set in 2029. I think of this as being loosely Homecoming future, but all that anyone needs to know is that Brian and Justin have been living together in Pittsburgh in a riverside house since Justin's return from New York. Justin and Daphne have a daughter – Dani. Brian, Justin, and Daphne are co-parents, an arrangement which works well for them all. Dani is 16, Gus is 29.WARNING:A little snarky about Mikey and the Munchers.





	Christmas Memories: 2029

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sfscarlet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sfscarlet/gifts).



'Twas the night before Christmas …

Upstairs in the Kinney-Taylor residence, Gus's daughter, Julia, was curled up in the small front bedroom that had been Gus's own until he'd outgrown it, and his fathers had built him his own apartment over the garage.

Downstairs, five adults and one teenager relaxed in front of a crackling fire while the Christmas tree glowed quietly in the corner, surrounded by mounds of gifts. It had been an exhausting day – visiting Santa, buying and wrapping last minute presents, hiding them, bringing them out once Julia was in bed, doing last minute food shopping, baking and decorating cookies and doing as much food prep as possible to make presenting tomorrow's feast a little easier. Tomorrow the whole extended family would descend on them, including Daphne's current squeeze who was spending this evening with his sister.

Now, however, whatever could be done to prepare for Christmas Day, had been done and it was time to sit before the tree, sip a glass or two of wine or whisky (or soda in the case of the teenager), indulge in the kinds of nibbles that Brian would normally refuse to have in the house, and generally enjoy being together. It wasn't often that both Gus and Dani visited at the same time, since Dani at sixteen led a fairly active social life as well as having her educational responsibilities and Gus and Lukas both had demanding jobs as well as a toddler who kept them on their toes.

As it happened, it was Gus's partner, Lukas, who started the reminiscences.

"This is a great house to spend Christmas in. It has a really special feel at this time of the year. It must have been great having your Christmases here growing up."

Gus laughed. "Sometimes," he said. "Sometimes, not so much." He paused for a moment and then said, a trace of wicked glee in his voice that held echoes of his father, "Remember the year the tree exploded?"

Daphne laughed, Brian snorted, Justin pursed his lips and gave him a warning look and Dani burst out "That's mean! How was I to know?"

Lukas gave her one of his lazy grins. "Take it easy, short stuff. Just tell me what happened to make the tree explode."

Dani huffed. "Nothing. It didn't really explode."

Brian snorted again and Justin elbowed him, saying pacifically. "Dani made a small mistake and it caused a bit of a …"

"An explosion," Gus laughed. "You should have seen it. Stuff went everywhere."

"Gus, it wasn't that bad," Justin said. Then since the story was clearly going to be told, he said evenly, "We had an artificial tree that year. A fiber optic one."

"It was really cool," Gus interpolated. "Kind of black and luminous, you know?"

"But Dani … I guess she was around three then … had never seen one before. All she knew were real trees, and she'd been over at Ben and Michael's and Ben made a point of filling up the water reservoir and explaining to Dani that it was important not to let the tree dry out because it could be really dangerous."

"So she poured water all over the base of the tree, and it seeped into the wiring and ka-blam!" Gus crowed. "Decorations went bouncing off the walls and some of the tinsel caught fire. It was awesome!"

Seeing his sister's glare, he reached out to pat her on the head. "Well, I guess you weren't to know. You were just a shrimp." He grinned wickedly. "Still are," he added provocatively.

Before she could launch herself on him in reprisal, she heard her beloved Dab's voice (as a child "Dadda Brian" had been too much for her to get her tongue around, so Brian had become "Dab", as Justin had been "Dus" to her brother). "I seem to remember that she had some encouragement," it said drily.

Gus laughed. "That was never proven."

"Uh-huh," Brian said. He looked at Lukas, "Sonny boy was going through a kind of anarchist Goth phase. That's why we had a f… flipping black tree. And he'd heard Zen Ben's damned lecture every year so he decided to "remind" Dani that Christmas trees shouldn't be allowed to dry out."

Gus laughed again. "It was still awesome. And the circuit breakers prevented any major damage."

Brian snorted again, and Justin said, "You were just lucky that we had most of it cleared up and all the electrics checked out before Brian got home. As it is, I had to bribe him not to lock up all your presents."

"His knees were sore for weeks," Brian commented. He tried to watch his language around Dani and now Julia, but he was, after all, still Brian Kinney and he refused to show any shame over his and Justin's still active sex life.

"Anyway," Gus said, years of experience meaning he was used to changing the subject when it veered in this direction. "It wasn't as bad as the year that Dad decided we were all getting too fat and we should have a strictly low-carb, low-fat Christmas."

Justin, giving his partner a gentle pat on the hand, said, laughing, "He'd been traveling for about three weeks – too many client lunches and dinners and not enough exercise. He put on like half a pound."

Brian scowled.

Gus picked up the story again. "So we had sugarless, low carb cookies – with no decoration, of course, and only breast meat from the turkey, no gravy, no potatoes, lots of spinach and kale and this horrible low fat rice pudding thing for dessert … it was all pretty revolting."

"I refused to eat it," Dani remembered. "Even Dab couldn't make me."

Brian pouted at her desertion. Normally he could rely on her to back him up.

"Sorry, Bri-dad, but it was all just disgusting."

"Hey!" Justin said, "I slaved for weeks trying to come up with anything vaguely Christmassy that would still fit Brian's requirements."

"Anyway, word got around about what we'd be eating and suddenly all these reasons came up why people couldn't make it for Christmas dinner that year. Even Grandma Jenn and Molly deserted us. And my Moms … or maybe it was just Mom that year – dropped me off at Kinnetik and went to Ben and Michael's for Christmas. So Christmas Day there were just the four of us and all this food … none of which was actually being eaten."

"I ate," Brian said indignantly.

"Yeah, about one slice of turkey breast," Justin said indignantly. "You wouldn't even touch the kale and you were the one who demanded that."

"In the end, when we were all just about starving, Dus found this pizza place that was open and delivering, and he ordered a whole batch of pizzas."

"While Dab kept saying that he wasn't going to let them in the house because just the smell of them would make him gain pounds and pounds and pounds," Dani giggled.

"And don't think we all didn't know that you snuck one of them into your office and ate the lot in there all by yourself," Justin told his partner severely.

They all laughed, except Brian, who was, however, grinning reminiscently, remembering how he'd worked off all those extra calories. Justin, after one look at that grin, elbowed him, but also moved even closer, nuzzling fondly at his shoulder.

"What about the year that your Mom brought that guy, and then Mel turned up and totally blew a gasket?" Dani said impulsively. Then, remembering how often her brother's life had been made hell by his mothers' fights and break ups, she slipped out of her chair to move across the floor to kneel at her brother's feet and pat his hand remorsefully. "Sorry, Gus," she said in a subdued voice.

He smiled down at her. "Nothing for you to be sorry for, Shrimp," he responded. "And it was a fairly spectacular melt down."

"Brian made them take it down to the pool room," Daphne observed, "but you could still hear some of the yelling all the way up here."

"The whole fiasco not made any better when f … lovely little JR decided to pull a Mikey and make it all about her," Brian snarked.

That brought a genuine laugh from both his children.

"She locked herself in the playroom," Dani giggled, moving back to her seat. "But only Gus and I noticed and we didn't tell anyone."

"So it was ages before anyone even noticed she was missing," Gus said, a touch maliciously. Too often in his childhood, his mother's reunifications with Melanie had meant that he was relegated to an also-ran in the household while Lindsay, trying to keep Melanie appeased. joined in with the pattern of allowing JR to do anything, get anything, she wanted and never ever get blamed for anything.

"And by then she'd fallen asleep on the old couch," Dani said. "So she didn't hear them calling her."

Brian gave one of his rare deep chuckles. "Mikey and Mel pretty much had conniptions. They wanted to call the police, the army, the fuc .. the coast guard, anyone, to help them find their little honey-bun."

"Gus told me to start yawning, and we pretended I was really tired, and he said he'd take me up to bed and we both hid out in my room until they all left so they couldn't ask us anything about where she was." Dani chortled.

Justin did his best to frown at them. "You didn't fool anyone, you know," he said. "We knew you were up to something."

"But we were enjoying the melt down too much to interfere," Daphne said simply.

"They all wound up leaving together, blaming us, the kids, each other … everyone except JR herself," Brian stated sarcastically.

They were all quiet for a moment, thinking about JR. She'd married right out of high school, and lived now in Texas. They rarely saw her. And when they did, things were very stilted and awkward. Whenever Michael ran out of anything else to whine about, JR's absence always provided a topic. For obscure reasons, he and Melanie both tended to blame Brian and Gus for their daughter's choices.

'But at least it meant that none of them showed their faces around here for weeks,' Daphne thought to herself.

"You must have had some good Christmases, though," Lukas prompted.

"Oh, yeah, we did," Dani nodded. "Remember the year you talked Bri-Dad into putting in the snowboard run over the steps down to the river?"

Brian grinned, and the others laughed.

"Only my father," Gus said love and pride brimming in his voice. "We hadn't had a lot of snow before Christmas that year, so he imported all this artificial stuff, had them build proper ramps and put up a huge net at the end along the river bank so we didn't go flying into the water and we had brilliant races and shit. It was amazing. My friends couldn't believe it."

"Ted got involved and made all their parents sign release forms saying that we weren't responsible for any injuries," Justin laughed.

"And we had Christmas dinner down in the pool area with the doors open so that we could eat in our snow gear and go straight back out to it," Gus remembered.

"And Dab got them to build me an igloo with the fake snow stuff, and it was like my own little house with Christmas lights and everything," Dani sighed. "It was brilliant."

Justin squeezed his partner's arm, knowing that these memories, while good ones, were still a little too emotional for Brian.

"The best year was the year you gave me my 'lair'" Gus said fervently. "That was the best Christmas surprise ever."

"Even if they did turn it into a total drama queen moment by fighting over whether to tell you or to keep it secret till Christmas," Daphne put in.

"Well, that's just the Dads," Dani said dismissively. That Christmas had been years and years ago and she had been way too young to remember it. "I liked the year that we told everyone we were going skiing and had the house just to ourselves for the whole of Christmas."

Justin laughed. "We told everyone that we had lights and TV and stuff on timers so that potential thieves wouldn't think the house was empty."

"Just in case they decided to drive by and check things out," Daphne explained.

"And we hid in the pool area every time someone came by because they couldn't get down there without going through the house," Gus added.

"Except Michael still didn't believe we would really not want to spend Christmas with him, so he tried to come by boat. They hired a boat somewhere and came across the river. They obviously planned to come up through the garden and see if they could break into the house from the back, just to be sure we really had gone away."

Everyone except Lukas, remembering, cracked up laughing. He looked around, saying impatiently, "So what happened?"

"Michael didn't tie up properly and when he tried to get off the boat he fell in the river," Justin gasped out. "He kept calling out for help, but we could see Ben and Deb were in the boat so we left it to them. They hauled him back in and then they sailed off again."

"You left out how long it took them to get the boat motor restarted," Brian commented.

"Well, at least it seemed to convince them that there really wasn't anyone here, because obviously we would have rushed out to help poor little Michael," Daphne said.

"So we got to have just the best Christmas, no drama or anything," Dani finished.

"And we did invite everyone for New Year, so we weren't total Grinches," Justin assured Lukas. "It was the year after the meltdown and we just wanted a nice peaceful family Christmas."

"Which we damned well knew we wouldn’t get with all the muncher drama, and the Novotny drama and whatever bullshit JR might come up with," Brian observed with his usual remorseless truthfulness.

"Since then we've made a rule – only us for Christmas Eve and Christmas morning, and we deal with the rest as it comes," Daphne explained. "It's worked out well so far."

'More than well,' Lukas thought a little sleepily, looking round the welcoming room, with its glowing fire and sparkling tree, feeling the warmth, the tangible love, between all the people present.

He raised the little wine left in his glass, "Well, here's to many more merry and memorable Christmases together."

They were all happy to drink that toast.


End file.
